Guidance on the new laws on Sexual Harassment and Third Party Harassment (from 30th October 2026):
- From 30th October 2026 there will be an extension to the current legal requirements for employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Currently, Employers are required to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. From 30th October Employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps” – see our guide to the 2024 changes here.
- And, in addition, from 30th October 2026, Employers can be held liable for third-party harassment of their staff, by anyone your staff may come into contact with while at work -e.g. customers, agents, location contacts, clients, suppliers, members of the public, Contractors.
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More details on taking “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment:
From 30th October 2026 there will be an extension to the current legal requirements for employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Currently, Employers are required to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment. From 30th October Employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps”.
Sexual harassment is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of:
- violating a worker’s dignity, or
- creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that worker.
From 30th October 2026, this means that Employers must be able to demonstrate that:
- They have taken all reasonable measures to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace (i.e. harassment by one worker to another worker in the workplace, or by another 3rd party to a worker).
- They have made sure there are no other steps that they could reasonably take to prevent this harassment. If an Employer decides a step is not reasonable to implement, this should be documented.
- The steps they have taken are effective, regularly reviewed (to learn any lessons after any incidents) and enforced properly.
What is “reasonable” will vary between employers depending on their size, type of business and the risks faced by its workforce (i.e. if their staff are customer facing, e.g. hospitality/retail there will be more to do), the resources available to the company.
Although Government guidance is not expected until 2027 (perhaps 2028) the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) has guidance which suggests measures that employers can take now to ensure they have taken ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. (The Government have produced a Factsheet on the change, before their guidance is published, which explains the EHRC’s role).
The current EHRC guidance (and accompanying 8-step guide) to stop harassment before it occurs, explains how to decide if a ‘step’ (that you can take to stop harassment) is ‘reasonable’ or not. The guidance advises that Employers:
- Consider the risk of sexual harassment occurring in your workplace. You can collect data to identify specific workplace risk factors – conducting risk assessments and using any existing data that may be available from previous complaints/grievances, exit interviews, wrap surveys, appraisals/1-2-1’s etc, to see if there are any patterns/areas of risk.
- Undertake Risk Assessments – they will be crucial to demonstrate you are complying with the new law and will need to be regularly reviewed to ensure they encompass any changes to the way you do business (consider remote working, remote locations, night shoots, if there will be a lot of visitors or artists).
- Consider what steps you can take to reduce the risk of sexual harassment and whether those steps are reasonable to take. Write an action plan based on these factors and implement those steps.
- Have action plans that will include developing routes for staff to speak up about their concerns, that are clear and easily accessible – with one internal reporting route (outside their normal management line) and 1 external route to report incidents.
- Introduce zero tolerance policies that are clearly communicated to all staff – and explain to new staff at their induction that the policy exists, how they can use it/access it and that they will be listened to.
- Offer training for managers (so they can identify inappropriate behaviour from staff and know how to listen to and deal with complaints).
- Revise existing harassment policies (and other appropriate, e.g. Equality, bullying policies).
The EHRC guidance (currently dated 2024 but in the process of being updated) will be the most useful guide to good Employer practice, until Government guidance is produced.
Acas have also recently updated their guidance on this, which you can see here.
The Talent Trust have produced an interesting guide “How to Tackle Bullying and Harassment on a Film Set” which you can download here.
Notes: After 30th October 2026, a worker will (still) not be able make a standalone claim against their employer if they believe their employer has breached the new duty to take ‘all reasonable steps’. Instead, a worker must first bring a claim against their employer for sexual harassment to an Employment Tribunal. If the worker is successful in their claim and compensation is awarded by the Tribunal, the Tribunal will automatically examine whether there was a breach by the Employer of the preventative duty (to take “all” steps).
Where the Tribunal finds a breach that involves, to any extent, sexual harassment, this may lead to an uplift in compensation payable (by the Employer to the employee) by up to 25%. A standalone breach may also be enforced by the EHRC under their existing enforcement powers.
Employers will have a legal defence to an employee’s claims for sexual harassment in the workplace if they can show that they took “all reasonable steps” to prevent their other employees from acting unlawfully.
When deciding whether an employer has met their obligations to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, Employment Tribunals are likely to look at:
- what risks the employer identified;
- what measures were implemented and if they were effective; and
- whether additional reasonable measures could have been taken by the Employer.
If employers have an anti-harassment policy and provide training for managera, but they have not identified steps to prevent causes of sexual harassment and/or have failed to take such steps, the Employer may not be able to demonstrate compliance with the new obligations.
Compensation for workers, at Employment Tribunal, for sexual harassment, is uncapped.
It is Important to note also that:
- Since April 2026, Sexual Harassment reporting is counted as a protected whistle-blowing disclosure (your Whistle-blowing policy needs updating if it has not been done).
- From 1st October 2026, Employment Tribunal claims made by staff can be brought up to 6 months after the ‘event’ that caused the claim – it was 3 months before. This is important if you have staff employed on a short production/shoot – staff may leave without any concerns being raised or properly listened to – and these concerns may resurface at a later date.
2. Preventing Third Party Harassment – further information:
From 30th October 2026, Employers can be held liable for third-party harassment of their staff, during the course of their employment, by anyone your staff may come into contact with while at work (e.g. customers, clients, agents, location contacts,suppliers, members of the public, Contractors), unless they can show they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.
‘Harassment’ goes beyond sexual harassment and encompasses most of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act, which are:
- age
- gender reassignment
- disability
- race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation.
Harassment related to marriage and civil partnership, or pregnancy and maternity, are not expressly covered by the new law. However, harassment because of these characteristics is likely to give rise to a claim of harassment on the grounds of sex or sexual orientation.
Employers will not have to ‘prevent’ the harassment happening, as the Government acknowledges this could be impossible, but they will have a duty to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent 3rd party harassment happening.
Harassment is when a worker “is subject to unwanted conduct that is related to a protected characteristic and has the purpose or the effect of:
- violating the worker’s dignity, or
- creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that worker”
Unwanted conduct covers a wide range of behaviour. It can include:
- spoken or written words
- ‘banter’
- posts or contact on social media
- imagery, graffiti
- physical gestures, facial expressions
- mimicry, jokes or pranks
- acts affecting a person’s surroundings
- aggression
- physical behaviour towards a person or their property.
The Government have acknowledged that “the steps an employer can reasonably take in respect of third parties is clearly more limited than in respect of their employees. The degree of control an employer has over a 3rd party is likely to be relevant when determining whether “all reasonable steps’ to prevent 3rd party harassment where in place”.
The types of harassment by third parties which will come under the new legislation includes:
- a visitor making sexual comments towards staff;
- a client racially abusing an employee;
- a contractor repeatedly making offensive comments about an employee’s disability; or
- a contributor making homophobic remarks.
Risk Assessments will again to be crucial to show that Employers have considered all areas of potential risk and what they can ‘reasonably’ do about the risk. As well as visitors/contractors/customers, Employers also need to consider where else staff might meet 3rd parties – external meetings/events, social events, work travel, lone workers, co-working spaces etc.
Anti-harassment policies will need explicit references to 3rd party conduct, including clear reporting routes, examples of prohibited behaviour, reassurance that complaints will be taken seriously.
Employers will also need to take reasonable action after incidents have taken place by 3rd parties. This must involve an investigation, but to what breadth/type will obviously depend on the circumstances.
An investigation may be a ‘reasonable’ step in its own right (i.e. to prevent future harassment, as the investigation may identify further steps that could be taken) and will show compliance with the new duty to prevent harassment by 3rd parties (a record of the investigation will be invaluable if the worker later brings a claim of harassment against the employer).
Brief information on investigating 3rd party harassment allegations:
- they can be challenging because the employer probably has limited control or access to the harasser (e.g. an employer cannot suspend or discipline the 3rd party!), and therefore may not be able to interview the harasser. In these circumstances you will be relying on the harassed employee’s account and any witnesses/documents or any evidence such as call recordings, CCTV footage, emails etc.
- If the harasser (or their employer) is in a commercial relationship with the Employer it can prove challenging to secure cooperation during the investigation. You can review any contractual relationships with the harasser’s employer and see if the contractual documents covers conduct of staff, cooperation, information sharing.
- Be aware that employees may feel uncomfortable reporting harassment by a client, if they think the employer may prioritise their relationship with the client.
- Therefore, you will need to appoint an investigator who can build trust and ensure the complainant feels supported throughout the process. In some cases, an external investigator may be appropriate.
- The investigator will need to ask if the employer has taken ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent the harassment – by seeing if there were previous similar incidents; by considering if there was a risk assessment, if managers had training, if policies and reporting mechanisms were in place.
- The investigator will also need to look at the culture of the employer to see if unacceptable behaviour from 3rd parties is tolerated.
- You may wish to ask the person investigating the allegations to make any recommendations (to training, processes etc) as well as giving you their findings.
- There will be data protection considerations, and there must be a ‘lawful’ basis to process a 3rd parties personal data (which will usually be ‘legitimate interests’). Special category data is likely to be involved (data about health, race, religion, sexual orientation etc) and processing this data will require a ‘lawful basis’ as well as meeting other conditions. Data retention timescales will need to be set. People involved in the investigation may make a subject access request; and they will need to be given privacy notices where possible.
Acas have also recently updated their guidance on this, which you can see here.